just a single tear
by falling winter roses
Summary: the last moments of just one of the poor souls who dived into the waters of the Black Lake to escape the shadow of a life / written for the Ilvermorny forum Bubble Bath Day Event / tw for suicidal thoughts and implied suicide


**a/n: i'll try to write quite a few for this challenge, i quite like it.**

 **so like… they'll all be quite bad but you know that's the usual**

 **Written for the Ilvermorny forum Bubble Bath Day Event.**

 **trigger warning for suicidal/very dark thoughts and implied suicide**

 **.**

 _ **Prompts:**_

 **Dead Sea Salts: Write about death/grief**

 **Eucalyptus Oil: Write a story set underwater**

 **Word Count: 669**

 **.**

As she drifts downwards through the water, her lungs screaming for air, she thinks of all the things she is leaving behind. She thinks of everything that she is escaping, and she thinks of all the people she will leave in either sorrow or joy.

Or perhaps will they not even notice at all?

She thinks of the memories she will escape as the blackness seeps into her mind, of the people and memories and places that she will forget as she steps into another world, or simply ceases to exist at all.

These are the thoughts she thinks, peaceful, content, wondering at the future that lies ahead of her, as she slowly sinks, down, down, down into the inky depths of the lake.

A shadow, drifting downwards, even darker than the murky water that cradles her limp body.

She has become a shadow, a living, dark shadow on the pristine grounds of Hogwarts.

This is what she is now.

Simply a dark shadow of the earth.

Simply a ghost of the girl she was once was, before.

There is a grief inside of her, a black worm in her shriveled heart. The heart that had been broken and a fixed and then broken and fixed again and again and again.

This life wasn't worth it anymore.

She remembers all the pain in her heart, all the words she had wanted to scream but had never been able to. She had always been silent, quiet, a shadow in the world.

She knows she will not have to keep anything hidden anymore.

She will not be a shadow anymore. She will be gone.

She will be a body at the bottom of the dark deep waters, gathered with so many other bodies of those other poor souls who found an escape at the bottom of the Black Lake. She will be, somewhere far in the future, just another pile of bones deep underwater, cracking under the weight of the body of some other escaping soul.

She is deep under the surface now, her lungs screaming for air.

She lets the water seep into her lungs, weighing her down, filling her insides, choking her.

The dark murkiness fills the empty spaces inside her, bloating her body as soon as she lets in enter her mouth and nose and lungs and everywhere.

It is painful, but she feels nothing.

She _is_ nothing. Nothing but the slowing heartbeat inside of her, nothing but the murky water filling up her insides, nothing but the dark crimson blood that sluggishly flows inside her veins, nothing but the consciousness slipping away from her.

She feels no panic, no deepening anxiety about what will happen after she becomes simply a silent figure hidden deep beneath the peaceful, dark waves of the murky water of the Black Lake. She does not know and she does not care about what will happen when they notice if she is gone… if they notice at all, that is.

She is almost free, almost free from the clutches of a life she'd hated with all the passion left inside of her after… after… after the things that had happened to make her this way.

Almost free.

 _Almost there,_ she thinks.

She is suddenly brought back to every time that she hated the word almost, almost perfect, almost okay, but never there.

But now that does not matter.

She knows she will get there.

For once, she is content with almost.

She smiles, her lips turning upward for the first time in years.

She is content.

Happy as she nears the end. Or perhaps, simply the beginnings of a new life?

She does not know what lies ahead.

And she does not care.

A single tear escapes her right eye, drifting through the water around her, a drop of near-pure water strangely bright against the murky water surrounding her.

Just a single tear.

Her heartbeat slows to a dull _beat… beat… beat._

Then it stops altogether.

A last breath escapes her, a few bubbles drifting upwards from the girl about to hit the bottom of the Black Lake. Her dark hair drifts around her, her body still.

Her eyes close.

She is dead.

 **.**

 **a note that i did use the pronoun 'she' in this little drabble, but it could be anyone. it could be a he or a she or someone who's genderfluid. it's not just girls.**

 **just a note.**


End file.
